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The Beginning of Fruitcake Season

I don’t know how I found the strength, but I managed to get organized and am ready to start baking. I ordered cellophane bags for vacuum sealing, and picked them up at the Greyhound depot. The large fruit order I placed at Springfield Bulk Foods is ready for pick up tomorrow morning.

Today I went to Costco and bought a dozen bags of pecans. I’ve been to the Superstore for the flour, butter, sugar and eggs. I spend last weekend chopping and cooking the fruit for the Okanagan Harvest Cakes. Yesterday I got rum at the licquor store.

Yesterday I also roasted all of the almonds, and today will chop the chocolate and cut parchment paper for the tins. Then tomorrow and Sunday there’s nothing left to do but bake like a lunatic. Once baked comes the rumming, bagging and sealing and the kitchen has to be cleaned.

A few days ago Nicky had some friends over so I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies for them, and made a batch of chocolate meringue cookies for my web designer. This couldn’t have taken more than a couple of hours of standing in total, but I felt my knees by the end. I thought I wonder how a day of fruitcake production’s going to go?

Maybe a body becomes too ancient for fruitcake production. I don’t know but I’m going to find out. Certainly I can’t do more than 30 minutes daily of walking/running with the dog and going 3 – 4 times a week for kick-ass classes at the gym to get into shape. If after that I’m too decrepit to bake, then I’d hate to see someone out of shape try to get into the food business.

But you know there’s not a single aspect of the fruitcake business that’s mentally hard or baffling. It’s all been worked out, and now it’s just a matter of producing them. So I feel pretty in control of the upcoming season, and hope to be able to spend at least two full days a week baking.

Not to whine, but I’ve told you this many times before. Two days of baking are preceded by days of shopping and preparation and followed by days of packaging and delivering or mailing. Being a one person show is kind of interesting.

However several people have commented to me how much they like my newsletters, so that always makes me feel good. I really enjoy writing them, and so it’s nice to hear people look forward to receiving them.

And why would I write a newsletter if I had no business to promote? I have to bake just to be able to do the fun parts. And because I love the fun parts, it’s always so darn awkward whenever ‘real’ entrepreneurs ask me questions about my business.

I still recall the days of dear Gerry Bruck asking me questions from his standpoint as a former silk mill owner. He’d ask me the simplest, most straight-forward questions such as “what’s your cost to make a fruitcake?” To which I usually replied with, “ummm….”

So why I’m in the fruitcake business I have no real idea, but now that I have people counting on me I can’t stop. I tried, and it caused a commotion, so never mind.